Washington Insider

The U.S. International Trade Commission voted 6 to 0 that Mexico’s sugar industry harmed American producers by dumping subsidized sugar onto the U.S. market, the American Sugar Alliance said in a news release. Read an excerpt from The Hagstrom Report that includes comments from the Sugar Users Association.

Officials from the United States and 11 other countries came to final agreement this week on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Washington Post reported that plans to announce the deal were delayed as negotiators grappled with details on market access for dairy products and biologic medicines.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has confirmed that the United States will host a meeting of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade ministers in Atlanta next Wednesday and Thursday. According to The Hagstrom Report, the announcement is a signal that the meeting may result in a final agreement

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today urged Congress to reauthorize the child nutrition programs this year, including the healthier school meal rules, and said he hopes that Congress will provide more money for summer feeding programs. The Senate Agriculture Committee has scheduled a markup on a bill on September 17. Read more from The Hagstrom Report.

Nearly nine out of 10 Americans support the school meals nutrition standards under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, according to a poll commissioned by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The survey shows that 89 percent say childhood obesity is a crisis or a problem, and 86 percent want the nutrition standards to stay the same or be strengthened.

President Obama announced that the United States and Cuba have re-established diplomatic relations, effective July 20, and will re-open embassies in their respective countries. According to The Hagstrom Report, it is unclear what impact re-establishing diplomatic relations will have on U.S.-Cuban agricultural relations.

The House passed today — for a second time — a bill to provide President Barack Obama with trade promotion authority. The vote on the bill that included the Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendment with an Amendment to H.R. 2146, the Trade Priorities and Accountability Act, was 218 to 208. Read the details in an exclusive excerpt from The Hagstrom Report.

The House Agriculture Committee has approved H.R. 2393, a bill to repeal country-of-origin labeling for beef, pork and chicken, but the road to resolution of the longstanding conflict with Canada and Mexico over the labeling program is still likely to be long, according to The Hagstrom Report. The vote was 38 to 6.

President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviewed the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, but did not announce a bilateral deal on the 12-nation agreement, White House officials said. Read an exclusive excerpt from The Hagstrom Report.

After a hearing that featured testimony from farm leaders favoring trade promotion authority, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, said “it is time to pass TPA,” but House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has said he is still undecided, according to The Hagstrom Report.

House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt, (R-AL), (pictured) told Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that he expects the 2015 Dietary Guidelines to be limited to nutrition and diet recommendations, Aderholt said in a news release. Read more in an exclusive excerpt from The Hagstrom Report.

The Food and Drug Administration is set to finish the rules for the Food Safety Modernization Act under a court-ordered schedule, Mike Taylor, the FDA deputy commissioner for food, said Sunday at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention. Read more from The Hagstrom Report.

The Commerce Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control will ease the financial regulations on U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba as part of a normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations, senior administration officials said today. Read more from The Hagstrom Report.

The Food and Drug Administration announced today it has finalized the long-awaited final rules on menu labeling in restaurants and other establishments and that they will be published in the Federal Register on Monday.